Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2)

Key words: Social Impact, Volunteer, Mentoring, Community, Professional Development

SV2 is a nonprofit community of values-aligned donors deeply committed to equity-centered social impact through collaborative grantmaking, impact investing, and immersive learning. SV2 brings together values-aligned partners, nonprofit leaders, and impact investees to listen, learn, and act side by side. Through this collaborative network, SV2 helps ensure that capital and resources flow toward organizations led by diverse teams that represent the communities they serve.

We engage Donor Partners directly in providing unrestricted grant funding to Bay Area nonprofits and making founder-friendly investments in early-stage social enterprises and impact funds making a global impact. Since 1998, SV2 has invested in over 200 social ventures.

Our Donor Partners learn best practices through this collective funding work, through immersive learning workshops, and by being in community with local leaders and organizations.

■ Grantmaking: We take an equity-centered philanthropy approach, supporting mission-driven nonprofits in the Bay Area with unrestricted multi-year grants and Beyond the Dollars support. We focus on funding organizations with diverse teams representative of the communities they serve.

■ Impact Investing: We make investments in early-stage companies with social or environmental impact at the core of their business model. We are especially focused on allocating capital to founders from underrepresented backgrounds.

■ Immersive Learning: We offer multi-day immersive learning trips in California and the U.S. South, learning workshops on topics like nonprofit financial review, board service, and due diligence training with equity at the center of our work.

Some distinctives of our work:

■ We’re focused on committing human, financial, and social capital for impact

■ We engage our donors in innovative best practices through “learning by doing” opportunities

■ We increase the pool of active givers who understand community-driven solutions

■ A commitment to equity, power-sharing, and mindfulness underpins our work

SV2 defines success in two ways: our Donor Partners become more equitable, effective, and generous givers as a result of our work, and our Grantees and Investees become more able to grow their impact as a result of our unrestricted funding and capacity-building Beyond-the-Dollars support.

Additional Resources:

■ Impact Report

■ Five Guiding Principles

■ Donor Partner Flyer

■ Donor Partner Contribution Form

■ SV2 Video - A Silicon Valley Funder Rethinks the Power it Holds

■ SV2 Video - 10 Years of Impact Investing at SV2

In addition, SV2's equity-centered work was recently featured in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, in a Fireside Chat between BoardSource CEO Monika Kalra Varma and David Onek, and in a BoardSource blog.